Marketing is facing the greatest changes since the birth of the internet, or perhaps since the birth of TV advertising. Our marketing megaphone has been passed to the consumer. So marketing needs to change its game - and fast!

Wednesday, 17 November 2010

Last week I came across an interesting study from the IBM Institute for Business Value in conjunction with the MIT Sloan Management Review entitled Analytics: The New Path To Value. Based on a survey of nearly 3000 executive managers and analysts, there are some great insights in the report.

Top performing organisations use analytics five times more than lower performers. While the adoption seems to be most widespread in finance functions, in the marketing functions of top performing organisations the usage seems to be around three times higher than in lower performing peers. Perhaps as a consequence of this over half of those surveyed indicated that enhancements in analytics capabilities was a top priority for their organisations.

The greatest inhibitors that prevent people from adopting analytics more widely are not actually the availability of technology, nor even the integrity or accessibility of data. The barriers are actually much more to do with management and culture than data and technology. "The leading obstacle to widespread analytics adoption is lack of understanding of how to use analytics to improve the business, according to almost four of ten respondents."

I'm sure this is true. Deploying new systems to make your marketing processes more efficient is one thing; but that alone does not equate to transformation. The real change happens when we start asking ourselves questions about the effectiveness of our activities, look for insights in our data, apply those insights to other activities and measure the impact. That has only a little to do with our tools, and much much more to do with our own curiosity.

Pete Jakob

Resident in the UK, I've nearly 30 years experience in marketing and sales in the IT industry working with IBM. In September 2012 I left to set up my own consultancy - Purple Salix. My prime motivation for initiating this Blog is to share ideas about practical ways of improving the ROI on B2B marketing campaigns. It seems to me that our industry's issue is NOT that we are unable to generate interest - the challenge is that we are unsuccessful at developing that into sales. At the same time the Marketing profession (along with professions associated with it) is going to have to re-invent itself as the "empowered consumer" becomes a more dominant force in the marketplace. We've lost control - DEAL WITH IT!